Leonid Volkov about the year of Navalny's campaign

The campaign was able to go beyond the limits of artificial "political niches"

Almost exactly one year ago, on December 13, 2016, an amazing journey began - a campaign to support the nomination of Alexei Navalny as a candidate for the presidency of Russia.

For the headquarters, of course, everything started earlier, last summer — planning, focus groups, work on the website, preparing the infrastructure — but a year ago we went public, and since then the campaign has been extremely public, under the close eye of friends and enemies, journalists and political scientists, advocates of change and those who feed on the hands of the Kremlin.

Therefore, it would seem, well, what a summing up - everything is already well known, the number of days of arrest and fines has been calculated, financial reports have been published, the statistics of meetings and rallies are known, the success of videos has been measured, all our successes are in full view of everyone, and all our failures. Never before has a political campaign in Russia been so open, studied so closely, published as much data as ours (and offhand I know 5–6 graduate students in political science from different universities around the world who are writing dissertations on our campaign right now).

But if you look at the details, it's easy to lose sight of some macroscopic changes, the big picture.

Let's look at the two Russias of December 2017, the one in which we live (one might even say "sitting"), and the other, hypothetical, in which Navalny's campaign did not start a year ago (and did not start at all).

The difference between the two is the direct and immediate result of our campaign (to this point in time).

I'll start with the obvious ones and end with the less obvious ones.

1. Politics has come to the regions.

And rightly so, she didn’t even “return”, but “came”. In 2011-2012, I myself was a regional political activist, and I remember very well this agonizing feeling: here you are doing something, sort of organizing, something even seems to work out - but still everything is decided in Moscow, and you have to wait - what there will be in Moscow. Even the legendary rallies of December 2011 went down in history as steadily as the "rally on Bolotnaya" and "rally on Sakharov" - although, of course, people took to the streets all over the country. But all the same, it was only an “addition” to the Moscow rallies, the attention and hope of the protest movement were riveted to the Moscow speakers, the whole country gathered on the Moscow stage and columns, they argued hoarsely around the Moscow number.

Not at all the same and not so - in 2017. And it's not just about the rallies, of course.

(Although, of course, both March 26 and June 12 were - and this is great - not Moscow, but all-Russian events. And not dozens of separate events, but, thanks to the general organization and online broadcast, large, super-scale unified events). Our campaign found the right words and the right channels of information, was able to create a political infrastructure in order to prove that there is a huge potential for political life, independent and free, in any Russian city.

Here's the news. This was most clearly emphasized, of course, by Alexei Navalny's meetings with supporters during the "autumn tour", where in each city, despite the wild opposition of the authorities, many more people came to the meeting than to any political event since 1991.

Murmansk and Smolensk, Tambov and Novokuznetsk, Ivanovo and Omsk - no one imagined that these cities were on the political map of Russia at all - and they declared themselves very loudly. The meeting of many thousands in each of them testifies not only that Navalny has support outside the Garden Ring and even the Moscow Ring Road, but also that each of these cities has a viable, strong political infrastructure. A large regional rally cannot be organized from Moscow alone - notification and preparation, agitation and organization on the spot fall on the shoulders of the regional headquarters and volunteers. That is, during the fall we showed and proved that in several dozen cities we have political organizational structures capable of at least organizing an event larger than all the events of the United Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, the SR and Yabloko in a few years combined.

It remains to be recalled that the list of cities where the meetings were held is rather random - determined by the presence of "approvals" or private sites. Thirty successful regional meetings leave no doubt - and in other cities where our headquarters are located, the meetings would have turned out to be no less powerful (and we would have held them if it were not for refusals due to lawlessness and not for several days of arrest, in fact, of the candidate in the midst of a tour).

Moreover, the list of 80 cities where headquarters are also formed under the influence of external factors - if there was more money, 180 headquarters would be happy to open - and we know (based on at least the number of volunteers and supporters registered on the website) that in Makhachkala and Naberezhnye Chelny, Abakan and Rybinsk, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Nizhny Tagil, thousands of citizens would also come to meetings with Navalny.

So, if it were not for Navalny's campaign, everyone would continue to believe in the stupidity that there is political potential only in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. This is not so: in all Russian cities there are leaders and organizers, brave volunteers and thousands of supporters who are ready to publicly declare their disagreement with where our country is and where it is going.

2. The idea of ​​what a political campaign and political work looks like has changed forever.

To put it briefly, until 2017, a “politician” was a person who sits in an office in Moscow, makes statements on important aspects of the current agenda, and the criterion for his success is the ability to get on TV and make the same statements, but from TV.
It was terrible - and, hooray, it's over. A new standard of political work has been set, I hope, once and for all.

A politician is someone who travels around the country and communicates with people, answering any questions. A politician is someone who starts a campaign well in advance of formal dates and proves his ability to create an infrastructure to support his political activities throughout the country.
A politician is someone who relies on the support of living people, supporters that everyone can see. So, in fact, as it should be by definition of this term.

3. Stop being ashamed to talk about inequality and injustice.

That's really the truth - the "legacy of the 90s"! You talk about how people should live better, that wages should rise - you are a populist. And if you are a liberal - know your place, boldly demand an increase in the retirement age! Each policy has a specific label, each has a specific role to play. Beyond its scope - do not you dare.

We got rid of this stigma with great blood; it was perhaps the most difficult of the campaign in general. How many times have we been branded as “irresponsible populists”. And yet, we imposed our agenda, showed a very important thing: in a country with the world's largest Gini coefficient, an indicator of property stratification, it is necessary to talk about this during elections - and not Syria or Crimea.

“People in Russia live poorly, the economy works unfairly, it shouldn’t be like this” - it turned out that you can speak out in support of business and competition, political and economic freedoms, not be a “commie”, in short - and at the same time say such a simple and obvious thing .

Navalny's campaign was able to go beyond the artificial "political niches" of Putin's Russia.

All this we, friends, should be proud of. Everyone who distributed at least 10 leaflets, campaigned three friends or donated 100 rubles contributed to the fact that Russia has changed a lot during this amazing year. It worked out great.
Let's continue!

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